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AJ Reynolds/OnlineAthens.com & The Athens Banner-Herald

Nothing gets by Oconee County's Alley Howell

By Chris Starrssports@onlineathens.com – published Friday, June 13, 2014

For the Oconee County girls soccer team, the buck stopped with Alley Howell.

Whether it was corralling shots on goal (she recorded 68 saves this season) or directing teammates to provide the best protection on defense, the Warriors’ goalkeeper was an instrumental part of the team’s success this spring.

With a strong mix of veteran players and impressive newcomers, Oconee County – which finished the year ranked No. 3 in Class AAA — went 15-4-1 this season with 11 shutouts and played in 17 games where opponents scored two or fewer goals. The Warriors advanced the final four of the Class AAA state tournament for the second time in three years, but were eliminated by Blessed Trinity.

“There’s no question that the last four years have been our most successful ones,” Oconee County coach Paul Dallas said. “And there’s no question Alley was one of the gears that made that happen, maybe the most significant gear. With the leadership role she took on, goalkeeping was really about half of the contribution she made – I’ve never had a leader come out and assert herself and be gutsy in how she addressed the rest of the team. She’s leaving a stamp of what quality leadership is for the captains that come next year.”

“I felt there were a couple of games I didn’t play my best,” Howell, a co-captain this season, said. “The Franklin County game – they scored four goals on me, which still irks me a little bit. But overall, I think I had a good season and I played the best I could and did what I had to do to help my teammates out.”

For her achievements this season, Howell is the Banner-Herald’s Girls Soccer Player of the Year.

What some opponents might not have known was that Howell played throughout the season with a painful meniscus tear in her left knee, an injury she suffered during basketball season. Her doctors told Howell – who missed much of her junior year due to shoulder surgery – that she could play as long as she could bear the pain and Howell soldiered on, never missing the call to duty.

“I was thinking this was my senior year and I wanted to play and I knew we had a chance to go far, even making a run for the state championship, which we ended up doing,” Howell, a first team All-Area selection by the Banner-Herald in 2012, said. “I knew I was the only goalkeeper and I knew I had to tough it out as much as I could.”

Dallas said it was difficult to see Howell play in pain but he thought it might be more difficult to try to keep her off the field.

“I know Alley, and if she’s hurt she’ll play anyway if at all possible,” he said. “She also has a way of rising up through adversity and finding a way to produce and she did every time. I remember that first game after the injury she was out there going beyond what she should have been doing and the doctor said she could play and it wouldn’t make it any worse, but that she’d be in a lot of pain and she was. Every time she went to kick you could see it in her face. So we tried to have other people do her jobs, but she was very stubborn.”

Perhaps Howell’s most noteworthy game of the season came in the playoffs when the Warriors defeated Woodward Academy 2-1 in penalty kicks, giving Oconee County a measure of revenge from Howell’s freshman year, when the War Eagles scored the winning goal with 2.8 seconds remaining in the state playoffs.

Howell made sure every Oconee County player was aware of the recent history between the two teams and many Warriors wrote “2.8” on their hands to remind them of Woodward Academy’s triumph.

“In our Woodward win, much of it may have come from a halftime moment when the captains talk,” Dallas said, recalling that Woodward Academy players were taunting the Warriors about their previous match-up. “It made a lot more impact than I could have given as the coach. Sometimes girls have to step up and do difficult things for the team, and it really made a difference. Alley was the orchestrator of the 2.8-second thing and she was the architect of that to use it as a rallying point.”

“We played a lot of teams really well this year,” Howell added. “Obviously, the Woodward game is one we’ll talk about for a long time. Beating them was probably the overall highlight of my high school career.”

Along with teammate Lauren Barfield, Howell signed with Emmanuel College to continue her soccer career. She recently had surgery on her left knee and expects to be redshirted in the fall. While Howell looks forward to the next turn in life, she said she’ll never forget her days at Oconee County.

“High school was awesome and I loved it,” she said. “It went by really fast but I loved every second of it. Playing basketball and playing soccer was probably the best decision I could have made. It made high school much more enjoyable. I’ve made some lifelong friends through sports. I’m going to miss Oconee County but I think I’ve got some bigger and better things to do. High school was great and I loved it and one day I wouldn’t mind my kids going to Oconee County. I loved it.”